


No Strings Attached

by humanveil



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: rarepair_shorts, M/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 07:42:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11596077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/humanveil/pseuds/humanveil
Summary: They’re not the kind of couple who hold hands.And then, all of a sudden, they are.





	No Strings Attached

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leontina (Leontina)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leontina/gifts).



No strings attached, that’s what they’d agreed.

It was easy enough to start that way. They were objects to each other; a way to release some steam between trials and funerals, a person to share the silence with, a warm body in a cold bed.  It was a comfort for Harry, to have someone who didn’t push him, someone who didn’t tread carefully around him. Charlie was one of the few who treated him like he was normal, and Harry liked him for it.

Somewhere along the way, however, the boundaries started to blur. Harry can’t pinpoint when, but he can pinpoint the moment he’d realised.

They were at a gathering. Harry had been sitting at a table all night, Charlie next to him; the both of them trying to blend in the background. A man had approached them, a million questions at the ready, and Harry’s discomfort had become increasingly obvious.

And then he’d felt it. It was a gentle touch, a light pressure. Charlie’s hand had moved under the table, his fingers curled around Harry’s wrist, a calloused thumb brushing back and forth across a the just of a bone. Charlie had acted like it was nothing, but to Harry it’d been everything. It had calmed him, had allowed him to finish the conversation with the stranger, and then it’d changed everything.

It is hard, Harry had realised, to return to a dynamic once you’ve noticed a shift. He’d tried, but he hadn’t been able to stop thinking of the memory; of the warm gut feeling it’d prompted, of the burning sensation he’d felt long after Charlie’s hand had returned to his lap, of the desire, the surprised realisation that _maybe_ he did want more than no strings attached.

Luckily for him, Charlie had felt the same way.


End file.
